AbsurdBeats

Enough fucking around.

That was how I began an editorial advocating for the release of hostages held in Lebanon. A year or so later the arms-for-hostages story—otherwise known as the Iran-Contra affair—broke.

I claim no responsibility for the colossal fuck-up that was the Reagan administration’s attempts to free those hostages—for some reason, I doubt anyone in DC was paying attention to a 20-year-old editorialist for the leftist Daily Cardinal—and I was as righteous in my denunciation of that colossal fuck-up as any righteous leftist editorialist.

However. I am responsible for my words and advocacy. I don’t remember exactly what I wrote, but I was pretty clearly in favor of robust action to get those hostages home.

And I was wrong wrong wrong.

Not wrong in wanting these men released, but wrong in thinking that no one in Washington was paying attention, that it was a simple matter, and that their release mattered more than anything else.

Wrong wrong wrong.

So, no, I have no opinion about the release of Sgt. Bowe Berghahl. I am glad, for he and his family, that he is home, and am not opposed in principle to notion of prisoner swaps—but beyond that, I got nothin’.